Beginning with adolescence, the story of Aeneas and Dido represents the
earliest phase of Augustine's search for meaning. He later judges it as misplaced --
an unhealthy desire for lust and suffering. It also represents the prodigality of
his early life.

1.12-14

Cicero

Cicero's Hortensius creates in Augustine a desire for the wisdom
present in all sects and a longing for rhetorical effectiveness.

The dualist belief system of Mani argued, among other things, that
God is a physical sphere of light, that the Elect (the spiritual elite) are served by the
Hearers, that evil is a separate will than that of the person, that the Old Testament was
not inspired by God, and that only Jesus' image was crucified. Augustine later comes
to reject all of this, especially after the orator Faustus is unable to answer his
questions.

Perhaps influenced by Manichean beliefs, Augustine is influenced by
astrology for awhile. Examples such as the lives of twins help convince him of the
mistaken nature of this. He also comes to realize that such beliefs excuse people
from the responsibility of their actions.

4.3, 7.5-6

Catholic Catechumen

(Ambrose)

At first, Augustine only listens to Bishop Ambrose as a model of rhetoric,
but soon he begins to listen to the content. He finds that Christianity is
intellectually tenable after all. Ambrose's stress on the "spiritual"
interpretation of Scripture is especially helpful. He attends Ambrose' church
as a catechumen while he looks into other sources of truth.

During the same time, he begins to more closely study the beliefs of
neoplatonists like Plotinus. Augustine continued to be deeply influenced by such
ideas as the doctrine of the logos and the ladder of ascent, that lower truth and beauty
leads to higher truth and beauty, finally leading to God the ultimate source of these.

Yet he finds in the New Testament, an application of the logos, specially
in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Christ offers a level of redemption that the
neoplatonics can not. He finds the New Testament also has more devotional power.

7.21ff.

Conversion

His conversion comes to a head as he hears the stories of other
conversions like that of Victorinus and those won over by the life of Anthony. He
finally heeds the message "Take up and read." There he learns: "Put
on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts."

8

"All manner of thing shall be well/ When the tongues of flame are in-folded/ Into
the crowned knot of fire/ And the fire and the rose are one." -- T.S. Eliot, Little
Gidding